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Take a man waiting - waiting between the two worlds of civilian life and the army, suspended between two identities - and you have a man who, perhaps for the first time in his life, is truly free. However, freedom can be a noose around a man's neck.
200 pages
First published January 1, 1944
152 people are currently reading
4,922 people want to read
About the author
Saul Bellow
267books1,890followersSaul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marines during World War II.
Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944, and his second, The Victim, in 1947. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began The Adventures of Augie March,, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. Later books include Seize The Day (1956), Henderson The Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Humboldt's Gift (1975), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Both Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet were awarded the National Book Award for fiction. Mr. Bellow's first non-fiction work, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, published on October 25,1976, is his personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975.
In 1965 Mr. Bellow was awarded the International Literary Prize for Herzog, becoming the first American to receive the prize. In January 1968 the Republic of France awarded him the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by that nation to non-citizens, and in March 1968 he received the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish literature". In November 1976 he was awarded the America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award was made to a literary personage.
A playwright as well as a novelist, Mr. Bellow was the author of The Last Analysis and of three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He contributed fiction to Partisan Review, Playboy, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Esquire, and to literary quarterlies. His criticism appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Horizon, Encounter, The New Republic, The New Leader, and elsewhere. During the 1967 Arab-lsraeli conflict, he served as a war correspondent for Newsday. He taught at Bard College, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota, and was a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944, and his second, The Victim, in 1947. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began The Adventures of Augie March,, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. Later books include Seize The Day (1956), Henderson The Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Humboldt's Gift (1975), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Both Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet were awarded the National Book Award for fiction. Mr. Bellow's first non-fiction work, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, published on October 25,1976, is his personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975.
In 1965 Mr. Bellow was awarded the International Literary Prize for Herzog, becoming the first American to receive the prize. In January 1968 the Republic of France awarded him the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by that nation to non-citizens, and in March 1968 he received the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish literature". In November 1976 he was awarded the America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award was made to a literary personage.
A playwright as well as a novelist, Mr. Bellow was the author of The Last Analysis and of three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He contributed fiction to Partisan Review, Playboy, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Esquire, and to literary quarterlies. His criticism appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Horizon, Encounter, The New Republic, The New Leader, and elsewhere. During the 1967 Arab-lsraeli conflict, he served as a war correspondent for Newsday. He taught at Bard College, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota, and was a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 354 reviews
May 13, 2024
Un individ încă tînăr, Joseph, vrea să scape de povara de a alege și de obligația de a-și justifica existența. Refuză să fie „condamnat la libertate�, cu formula lui Sartre. În consecință, s-a înscris în Armată (cu A mare în original), dar birocrația cazonă îl pune să aștepte mai bine de 6 luni. Acest răstimp îl scoate din sărite și din minți. Devine agitat și irascibil, se ceartă cu Ida (soția lui), renunță la prieteni, renunță la amantă (Kitty), renunță pînă și la cărți. Nimic nu mai are importanță pentru el.
În fiecare dimineață, după ce se trezește, are de rezolvat una și aceeași problemă insolubilă (pentru orice „om suspendat�): să deschidă ochii sau să-i țină strîns închiși, să se ridice din pat sau să rămînă întins pînă la 12, să-și caute papucii sau să umble prin cameră în picioarele goale, să bea sau să nu bea o cafea (sau un whisky), să se îmbrace sau să nu se îmbrace, să facă o plimbare sau să nu iasă din casă, să se tundă sau să-și lase părul lung, să-și taie unghiile au ba (p.121). E asaltat de dileme din care nu poate ieși. Personajul mi-a adus aminte de Oblomov.
Cînd, în sfîrșit, după 6 luni de așteptare (și de nervi), îi vine chemarea în armată, Joseph se destinde. Scrie mulțumit în jurnal:
Romanul nu are acțiune, e plicticos.
În fiecare dimineață, după ce se trezește, are de rezolvat una și aceeași problemă insolubilă (pentru orice „om suspendat�): să deschidă ochii sau să-i țină strîns închiși, să se ridice din pat sau să rămînă întins pînă la 12, să-și caute papucii sau să umble prin cameră în picioarele goale, să bea sau să nu bea o cafea (sau un whisky), să se îmbrace sau să nu se îmbrace, să facă o plimbare sau să nu iasă din casă, să se tundă sau să-și lase părul lung, să-și taie unghiile au ba (p.121). E asaltat de dileme din care nu poate ieși. Personajul mi-a adus aminte de Oblomov.
Cînd, în sfîrșit, după 6 luni de așteptare (și de nervi), îi vine chemarea în armată, Joseph se destinde. Scrie mulțumit în jurnal:
„Nu va mai trebui să dau socoteală pentru ființa mea... Voi fi în grija altora, scăpat de autodeterminare, lipsit de libertate� (p.220).
Romanul nu are acțiune, e plicticos.
November 28, 2017
What happens if you are caught between two commitments?
If you have time to look at the world from an unoccupied position?
What will you see?
What will you discover of our common humanity?
Are you still engaged in the questions your generation asks, if you are not actively participating?
Can you understand the world better while you are inside it, or do you need to establish distance between yourself and everyday business to define its essence?
If it requires you to step out to see the patterns, but you are not part anymore, does that mean that you can’t be part of humanity and understand it at the same time? Catch 22?
“I have a right to be spoken to!� yells the protagonist at one point, utterly frustrated with the reaction of his environment to the fact that he resigns from his work in order to join the army, but remains in a vacuum while waiting for the official procedures to take place.
Thinking is a way of communicating, but it also separates the reality of one human being from another. Having a lot of time to think and observe is enlightening, and incredibly depressing.
The protagonist goes through alienation from different groups, first in his head, then in verbal outbursts, which constitute the last reactions in a long chain of causes and effects in his mind, but come as a complete surprise to his family and friends, who do not follow his preceding thoughts, and only judge the ultimate anger and frustration he shows. Family, friends, Communist party, social groups, all are reevaluated from the perspective of an outsider.
“Preferring embarrassment and pain to indifference�, the lonely man starts to pick fights within the family and in the local environment to feel part of it, to feel real.
Between the outbursts of desperation, some interesting discussions temporarily lighten his mood:
What is life? What is worthwhile? Is it meaningful to continue carrying out nonsensical tasks, justified by the prestige of a workplace in a 53 storey building? Or is the only important work in the world that of art and imagination� ?
The novel is written in the form of a diary moving between long philosophical reflections, in the spirit of “the wretched must suffer�, and short unimportant entries, filling in the banalities of life: “January 16th, fairly quiet day�, thus showing the swinging back and forth of feelings and thoughts.
As the alienation from the active world grows, the questions in the diary become more urgent:
“You can’t banish the world by decree if it is in you!�
Self reflection is part of the development as well, and recognition of the narrator’s own arrogance in categorising people according to those who have worthwhile ideas and those who don’t. Part of the issue is the anonymous urban trauma: lack of human spirit in the too overwhelming, crowded human, treeless world of the city, leading to longing for nature as a means to rediscover humanity.
In an act of hopelessness, the protagonist gives up his lonely freedom and speeds up the process to join the army, recognising a defeat in front of himself and the freedom he could not handle:
“I had not done well alone!�
On his last civilian day, he exclaims:
“I am no longer to be held accountable for myself, freedom cancelled.�
“Long live reglementation!�
Worthwhile read, very sad, I would have wished for him to cherish the rare opportunity to have time to think and be creative, but I guess the message is true in essence: Man cannot live with others, and not alone either. Happiness is a very thin line between the two opposites, and it is easy to lose balance, both inside and outside the hamster wheel of daily occupation!
If you have time to look at the world from an unoccupied position?
What will you see?
What will you discover of our common humanity?
Are you still engaged in the questions your generation asks, if you are not actively participating?
Can you understand the world better while you are inside it, or do you need to establish distance between yourself and everyday business to define its essence?
If it requires you to step out to see the patterns, but you are not part anymore, does that mean that you can’t be part of humanity and understand it at the same time? Catch 22?
“I have a right to be spoken to!� yells the protagonist at one point, utterly frustrated with the reaction of his environment to the fact that he resigns from his work in order to join the army, but remains in a vacuum while waiting for the official procedures to take place.
Thinking is a way of communicating, but it also separates the reality of one human being from another. Having a lot of time to think and observe is enlightening, and incredibly depressing.
The protagonist goes through alienation from different groups, first in his head, then in verbal outbursts, which constitute the last reactions in a long chain of causes and effects in his mind, but come as a complete surprise to his family and friends, who do not follow his preceding thoughts, and only judge the ultimate anger and frustration he shows. Family, friends, Communist party, social groups, all are reevaluated from the perspective of an outsider.
“Preferring embarrassment and pain to indifference�, the lonely man starts to pick fights within the family and in the local environment to feel part of it, to feel real.
Between the outbursts of desperation, some interesting discussions temporarily lighten his mood:
What is life? What is worthwhile? Is it meaningful to continue carrying out nonsensical tasks, justified by the prestige of a workplace in a 53 storey building? Or is the only important work in the world that of art and imagination� ?
The novel is written in the form of a diary moving between long philosophical reflections, in the spirit of “the wretched must suffer�, and short unimportant entries, filling in the banalities of life: “January 16th, fairly quiet day�, thus showing the swinging back and forth of feelings and thoughts.
As the alienation from the active world grows, the questions in the diary become more urgent:
“You can’t banish the world by decree if it is in you!�
Self reflection is part of the development as well, and recognition of the narrator’s own arrogance in categorising people according to those who have worthwhile ideas and those who don’t. Part of the issue is the anonymous urban trauma: lack of human spirit in the too overwhelming, crowded human, treeless world of the city, leading to longing for nature as a means to rediscover humanity.
In an act of hopelessness, the protagonist gives up his lonely freedom and speeds up the process to join the army, recognising a defeat in front of himself and the freedom he could not handle:
“I had not done well alone!�
On his last civilian day, he exclaims:
“I am no longer to be held accountable for myself, freedom cancelled.�
“Long live reglementation!�
Worthwhile read, very sad, I would have wished for him to cherish the rare opportunity to have time to think and be creative, but I guess the message is true in essence: Man cannot live with others, and not alone either. Happiness is a very thin line between the two opposites, and it is easy to lose balance, both inside and outside the hamster wheel of daily occupation!
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February 2, 2022
"İşte yaşam bu!" diyorum. İğrenç, saçma, budalaca ve hiçbir şey! Gerçek yaşam, sanat ve düşüncedir. Yaşamaya değer tek şey hayal gücüdür."
(s.100)
Boşluk, ya da başka bir tabirle, fazla boş zaman insanı nasıl etkiler?
Öncelikle Saul Bellow kimdir? Bununla başlayım yorumuma. 1915'te Kanada Quebec doğumlu aslen Kanadalı bir yazar. Kendisi Nobel Edebiyat ödülü başta olmak üzere pek çok ödül kazanmış. Kitabın arka kapağında ABD'ye Rusya'dan gelmiş bir aileye mensup olduğu yazılmışsa da; aslen Quebec doğumludur.
Geçtiğimiz yıl Ankara'da bir sahafta bulup aldığım bu elimde tuttuğum baskı Cem Yayınları'nın Nobel serisinden çıkma. 1976 Nobel Edebiyat Ödülü'nü alan Bellow'un onu üne kavuşturan Boşlukta Sallanan Adam (Dangling Man) adlı eserinin seçilmesi iyi bir tercih olmuş. İstanbul'da 1991'de basılan bu baskı saman kağıt daktilo tipi yazı karakteri, yapıştırma karton kapak üzerinde kime ait olduğunu bilmediğim bir çizime sahip. Elimdeki kitabın ya künye kısmı kayıp ya da hiç bulunmadığından kapaktaki çizimin kime ait olduğunu bilmiyorum ama konuya biraz yakın bir seçim olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Kitabın çevirmeni , çevirisiyle daha çok tanınan bir çevirmen. Bu kitap akıllarda daha çok üzerinde Nobel madalyonunun bulunduğu ve bir gazetenin set halinde verdiği baskıyla tanınır. O baskıyı da Neşe hanım çevirmişlerdi. Şimdilerde Okuyan Us yayınlarından yeniden basıldı aynı çeviriyle.
Eser 15 Aralık 1942'te başlayan bir günce şeklinde yazılmış. Boşluğun daha doğrusu "özgürlüğün" anlamını kavrayamayan, bu düştüğü boşlukta hayata; insanlara, dünyaya dair ciddi derin sorgulamalar yürüten bir adamı, Joseph'i anlatıyor. İlk başlarda durağan olan anlatım giderek akıcılaşıyor ve insanda merak duygusuyla koşut olarak empati de uyandırıyor. Karakteri boşluğa düşüren şey bir tür "Askere Alınmayı Bekleme" diyebiliriz. İşini bırakan karakterimiz askere alınmayı beklemektedir. "Belirsizlik" onu çıldırtırken "boş durmak" kişiliğini deforme ediyor, dönüştürüyor. Bu kitapta insan doğasına yönelik olarak pek çok analiz yapabilir dikkatli bir gözlemci. Bellow'un insan doğasını anlama konusundaki ustalığı da en az edebi ustalığı kadar dikkati çekmeli.
Özgürlük her zaman mutluluk mudur? Özgürlük, daha doğrusu, hangi koşullar altında insanı mutlu eder? Hepimiz hayalini kurmuşuzdur. "İşimiz olmasın, sabahları erken kalkmak zorunda olmayalım, sınırsız zamanımız olsun... Bütün bu kitapları sabah akşam okurdum" deriz mesela. Gerçekte böyle bir durum olsaydı ne yapardık?
Bellow'un bu kitabı her kütüphanede bulunması gereken kitaplardan. Tıpkı , gibi en temel klasikler arasında okumalı.
18.01.2019
M. B.
Boşluk, ya da başka bir tabirle, fazla boş zaman insanı nasıl etkiler?
Öncelikle Saul Bellow kimdir? Bununla başlayım yorumuma. 1915'te Kanada Quebec doğumlu aslen Kanadalı bir yazar. Kendisi Nobel Edebiyat ödülü başta olmak üzere pek çok ödül kazanmış. Kitabın arka kapağında ABD'ye Rusya'dan gelmiş bir aileye mensup olduğu yazılmışsa da; aslen Quebec doğumludur.
Geçtiğimiz yıl Ankara'da bir sahafta bulup aldığım bu elimde tuttuğum baskı Cem Yayınları'nın Nobel serisinden çıkma. 1976 Nobel Edebiyat Ödülü'nü alan Bellow'un onu üne kavuşturan Boşlukta Sallanan Adam (Dangling Man) adlı eserinin seçilmesi iyi bir tercih olmuş. İstanbul'da 1991'de basılan bu baskı saman kağıt daktilo tipi yazı karakteri, yapıştırma karton kapak üzerinde kime ait olduğunu bilmediğim bir çizime sahip. Elimdeki kitabın ya künye kısmı kayıp ya da hiç bulunmadığından kapaktaki çizimin kime ait olduğunu bilmiyorum ama konuya biraz yakın bir seçim olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Kitabın çevirmeni , çevirisiyle daha çok tanınan bir çevirmen. Bu kitap akıllarda daha çok üzerinde Nobel madalyonunun bulunduğu ve bir gazetenin set halinde verdiği baskıyla tanınır. O baskıyı da Neşe hanım çevirmişlerdi. Şimdilerde Okuyan Us yayınlarından yeniden basıldı aynı çeviriyle.
Eser 15 Aralık 1942'te başlayan bir günce şeklinde yazılmış. Boşluğun daha doğrusu "özgürlüğün" anlamını kavrayamayan, bu düştüğü boşlukta hayata; insanlara, dünyaya dair ciddi derin sorgulamalar yürüten bir adamı, Joseph'i anlatıyor. İlk başlarda durağan olan anlatım giderek akıcılaşıyor ve insanda merak duygusuyla koşut olarak empati de uyandırıyor. Karakteri boşluğa düşüren şey bir tür "Askere Alınmayı Bekleme" diyebiliriz. İşini bırakan karakterimiz askere alınmayı beklemektedir. "Belirsizlik" onu çıldırtırken "boş durmak" kişiliğini deforme ediyor, dönüştürüyor. Bu kitapta insan doğasına yönelik olarak pek çok analiz yapabilir dikkatli bir gözlemci. Bellow'un insan doğasını anlama konusundaki ustalığı da en az edebi ustalığı kadar dikkati çekmeli.
Özgürlük her zaman mutluluk mudur? Özgürlük, daha doğrusu, hangi koşullar altında insanı mutlu eder? Hepimiz hayalini kurmuşuzdur. "İşimiz olmasın, sabahları erken kalkmak zorunda olmayalım, sınırsız zamanımız olsun... Bütün bu kitapları sabah akşam okurdum" deriz mesela. Gerçekte böyle bir durum olsaydı ne yapardık?
Bellow'un bu kitabı her kütüphanede bulunması gereken kitaplardan. Tıpkı , gibi en temel klasikler arasında okumalı.
18.01.2019
M. B.
October 28, 2019
Un jurnal trist, plin de întâmplări și lucruri demne de luat în seamă!
"În plus, zice el, în fiecare dintre noi există un element comic sau fantastic. Nu poți controla complet astfel de lucruri."
"- Da' de unde! Mai bine așa. Gândește-te cum ar fi realitatea dacă s-ar îndeplini chiar toate visurile."
"În plus, zice el, în fiecare dintre noi există un element comic sau fantastic. Nu poți controla complet astfel de lucruri."
"- Da' de unde! Mai bine așa. Gândește-te cum ar fi realitatea dacă s-ar îndeplini chiar toate visurile."
July 16, 2007
Bellow is one of the strangest writers - it would be hard to say that I really like his writing. I mean, it is beautifully put together, but as I'm reading his books I keep thinking to myself, 'I'm really not enjoying this'. It is only once it is finished and months later I'm still thinking about the damn thing that I realise just how good he is.
I've often thought this one would make a good film. Of course, it would have to be a European film and since it is set in America it simply can never be made. Which is a pity. If you are an American film maker and are thinking of proving me wrong - don't bother. Why is it that a nation that can produce such wonderful novelists seems so incapable of making films for adults?
There comes a point in everyone's life when we feel we are dangling in just the way the main character here is dangling. It is a very long time since I read this book, but the scene in the coffee shop where he screams at the communist for selling out the movement is still burnt into my soul (or, at least, it would be if I had one).
I've often thought this one would make a good film. Of course, it would have to be a European film and since it is set in America it simply can never be made. Which is a pity. If you are an American film maker and are thinking of proving me wrong - don't bother. Why is it that a nation that can produce such wonderful novelists seems so incapable of making films for adults?
There comes a point in everyone's life when we feel we are dangling in just the way the main character here is dangling. It is a very long time since I read this book, but the scene in the coffee shop where he screams at the communist for selling out the movement is still burnt into my soul (or, at least, it would be if I had one).
May 8, 2021
Difficult Freedom
Saul Bellow's short and first published novel "Dangling Man" (1944) explores broad themes of community and alienation in the words of a self-centered young man awaiting induction into the Army in 1942-43 during WW II. The book sold poorly but it established Bellow as a writer of promise. The story is set in Chicago and is told exclusively by means of diary entries of the protagonist, who is identified only as Joseph, between December 15, 1942, and April 9. 1943. As befitting diary entries, most of the book is recounted in the first person. But in several places, Joseph tries to study and describe himself and speaks of his life in the third person. In diary entries late in the story, Joseph holds lengthy philosophical discussions with an alter-ego.
Joseph is 27 years old and a Canadian citizen. As the book opens, issues of citizenship have delayed Joseph's induction into the Army for seven months, during which he becomes the "dangling man" belonging neither to civilian nor military life. During this time, Joseph leaves his job working for a travel bureau. He is supported by his long-suffering wife of five years, Iva. He becomes increasingly resentful of his dependency on his wife. With their economically marginal situation, Joseph and Iva have given up their modest but reasonably comfortable flat for a squalid rooming house. Joseph expresses his disgust throughout the book for his landlord and landlady and many of the cotenants.
As his diary entries reveal, Joseph had tried before he saw himself as the dangling man (which in fact had been his situation throughout his life) to create a balance between his work and his interests which are largely intellectual and scholarly. For a brief time, Joseph had been a communist. He left the party and his former comrades shun him. He tries to think through the nature of American society and its relationship to individualism. When Joseph loses his job, Iva encourages him to read and to pursue his writings on the Enlightenment and on Romanticism. But with his restlessness and his new-found if precarious liberty, Joseph is unable to do so. He sits for long hours in his room unable to do anything, takes short walks for meals, has an affair, fights with his family and former friends, and he broods.
In one of several scenes of fighting in the book, Joseph and Iva visit his brother Amos, his wife Dolly, and daughter Etta for New Years. Amos has made a financial success of his life and presses Joseph to accept financial help which he proudly refuses. During the catastrophic New Years dinner, Joseph refuses his brother's offer of a holiday gift of cash. More tellingly, Joseph finds himself in a highly-compromising, sexually charged situation with his brother's daughter. Other fights with former friends and colleagues occur througout the book as part of Joseph's inability to decide what to do with himself.
Joseph wants to accept and function in American society and not to pursue the criticism and rejection which was common among intellectuals then and remains so today. He supports, however tentatively, the war effort and tries to make his peace with capitalism and materialism. These efforts are unsuccessful as Joseph cannot avoid his stance as an alienated outsider. Joseph finds he cannot make use of the freedom with uncertainty that has been offered to him as the draft board finally resolves Joseph's status. At the end of the book, Joseph is about to be inducted, facing an uncertain future with his wife and family, and the induction comes as a relief to him from his own purposelessness.
Although set in Chicago, Bellow's novel is heavily influenced by the themes of European philosophy and existentialism. Dostoevsky's anti-hero in "Notes from the Underground" is a predecessor of Joseph. Joseph is also preoccupied with the writings of Goethe as an attempted counter-balance to his own situation.
As in much of Bellow's later writing, "Dangling Man" juxtaposes scenes of American toughness and street life with long passages of philosophical reflection. The themes of alienation and liberty presented in this book cut deeper than the specific situation that confronts Joseph. As a narrator, Joseph is solipsistic and narcicistic. He also dislikes women. A disturbing tone of subtle racism underlies the book. Although short, the book drones on at times and lacks the sparkle of Bellow's later writing. Still, "Dangling Man" is a thoughtful and ambitious novel that captures something important about freedom and the American dilemma.
Robin Friedman
Saul Bellow's short and first published novel "Dangling Man" (1944) explores broad themes of community and alienation in the words of a self-centered young man awaiting induction into the Army in 1942-43 during WW II. The book sold poorly but it established Bellow as a writer of promise. The story is set in Chicago and is told exclusively by means of diary entries of the protagonist, who is identified only as Joseph, between December 15, 1942, and April 9. 1943. As befitting diary entries, most of the book is recounted in the first person. But in several places, Joseph tries to study and describe himself and speaks of his life in the third person. In diary entries late in the story, Joseph holds lengthy philosophical discussions with an alter-ego.
Joseph is 27 years old and a Canadian citizen. As the book opens, issues of citizenship have delayed Joseph's induction into the Army for seven months, during which he becomes the "dangling man" belonging neither to civilian nor military life. During this time, Joseph leaves his job working for a travel bureau. He is supported by his long-suffering wife of five years, Iva. He becomes increasingly resentful of his dependency on his wife. With their economically marginal situation, Joseph and Iva have given up their modest but reasonably comfortable flat for a squalid rooming house. Joseph expresses his disgust throughout the book for his landlord and landlady and many of the cotenants.
As his diary entries reveal, Joseph had tried before he saw himself as the dangling man (which in fact had been his situation throughout his life) to create a balance between his work and his interests which are largely intellectual and scholarly. For a brief time, Joseph had been a communist. He left the party and his former comrades shun him. He tries to think through the nature of American society and its relationship to individualism. When Joseph loses his job, Iva encourages him to read and to pursue his writings on the Enlightenment and on Romanticism. But with his restlessness and his new-found if precarious liberty, Joseph is unable to do so. He sits for long hours in his room unable to do anything, takes short walks for meals, has an affair, fights with his family and former friends, and he broods.
In one of several scenes of fighting in the book, Joseph and Iva visit his brother Amos, his wife Dolly, and daughter Etta for New Years. Amos has made a financial success of his life and presses Joseph to accept financial help which he proudly refuses. During the catastrophic New Years dinner, Joseph refuses his brother's offer of a holiday gift of cash. More tellingly, Joseph finds himself in a highly-compromising, sexually charged situation with his brother's daughter. Other fights with former friends and colleagues occur througout the book as part of Joseph's inability to decide what to do with himself.
Joseph wants to accept and function in American society and not to pursue the criticism and rejection which was common among intellectuals then and remains so today. He supports, however tentatively, the war effort and tries to make his peace with capitalism and materialism. These efforts are unsuccessful as Joseph cannot avoid his stance as an alienated outsider. Joseph finds he cannot make use of the freedom with uncertainty that has been offered to him as the draft board finally resolves Joseph's status. At the end of the book, Joseph is about to be inducted, facing an uncertain future with his wife and family, and the induction comes as a relief to him from his own purposelessness.
Although set in Chicago, Bellow's novel is heavily influenced by the themes of European philosophy and existentialism. Dostoevsky's anti-hero in "Notes from the Underground" is a predecessor of Joseph. Joseph is also preoccupied with the writings of Goethe as an attempted counter-balance to his own situation.
As in much of Bellow's later writing, "Dangling Man" juxtaposes scenes of American toughness and street life with long passages of philosophical reflection. The themes of alienation and liberty presented in this book cut deeper than the specific situation that confronts Joseph. As a narrator, Joseph is solipsistic and narcicistic. He also dislikes women. A disturbing tone of subtle racism underlies the book. Although short, the book drones on at times and lacks the sparkle of Bellow's later writing. Still, "Dangling Man" is a thoughtful and ambitious novel that captures something important about freedom and the American dilemma.
Robin Friedman
January 22, 2021
This is Saul Bellow’s debut novel, published in 1944, so during the Second World War. It consists of Joseph’s personal diary entries dating from December 15, 1942, to April 9, 1943. He is waiting to be called up to the war. When the book opens he had already been waiting for seven months. Born in Canada, he was classified as an alien, this being the reason for the delay, the postponement of his induction. He is married, has a degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and resides with his wife in a boardinghouse in Chicago. He has lived in the US for eighteen years, and he says he wants to go fight in the war. He has quit his job and is waiting for induction. He is a dangling man, waiting and waiting.
He is free; there are no restraints placed on him and no claims on his time. What does he do with his freedom? Do men enjoy such freedom? This is the core question of the book. The two, husband and wife, live on her salary. This she is fine with, but for how long? We watch also how others react to Joseph’s situation, his having no job, sitting around waiting.
The writing, the prose style—I am split on this. Joseph’s journal entries, particularly in the beginning, are often philosophical. He ponders his existence and the purpose of life. He struggles to perceive who he is and who he wants to be. He says he is “preparing himself spiritually for the war�. His philosophical reflections I found sophomoric and not well expressed. Remember, he is writing in his diary. On the other hand, descriptions of places and people are very much to my taste. These lines I like a lot.
As we proceed through the book we not only hear Joseph’s thoughts but also see what he does. We observe how his moods change and how his overall temperament is altered. Then, he does something. I like how his thoughts and actions and diary entries reflect each other.
I like the final message of the book. I think what is said is true.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kirby Heyborne. It is fine and not hard to follow, but neither is the narration particularly special. He dramatizes a bit, but does not overdo it. There are lines of French. These are poorly pronounced.
****
* 4 stars
* 4 stars
* 3 stars
* 2 stars
He is free; there are no restraints placed on him and no claims on his time. What does he do with his freedom? Do men enjoy such freedom? This is the core question of the book. The two, husband and wife, live on her salary. This she is fine with, but for how long? We watch also how others react to Joseph’s situation, his having no job, sitting around waiting.
The writing, the prose style—I am split on this. Joseph’s journal entries, particularly in the beginning, are often philosophical. He ponders his existence and the purpose of life. He struggles to perceive who he is and who he wants to be. He says he is “preparing himself spiritually for the war�. His philosophical reflections I found sophomoric and not well expressed. Remember, he is writing in his diary. On the other hand, descriptions of places and people are very much to my taste. These lines I like a lot.
As we proceed through the book we not only hear Joseph’s thoughts but also see what he does. We observe how his moods change and how his overall temperament is altered. Then, he does something. I like how his thoughts and actions and diary entries reflect each other.
I like the final message of the book. I think what is said is true.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kirby Heyborne. It is fine and not hard to follow, but neither is the narration particularly special. He dramatizes a bit, but does not overdo it. There are lines of French. These are poorly pronounced.
****
* 4 stars
* 4 stars
* 3 stars
* 2 stars
November 6, 2022
Beautiful novel, in the line of Dostoyevsky's 'Memories from the underground' and Hesse's 'Steppenwolf'. An exploration of the modern human condition: to be or not to be, placed in Chicago in 1942-43. The main character, Joseph, hesitates to dive in the war, like all men else around him; he finds no solution to his existential despair, is literally 'dangling', and gets frustrated by the hopeless waiting. In the end he makes up his mind, but it is doubtful his decision is satisfactory. A staggering monologue, this debut of Bellow. Aren't we all dangling?
October 20, 2017
Beklemenin ve boşluğun insanı bir elektrikli süpürge gibi vakumlayıp sorgulama girdabına çektiğini ve sonunda posasını çıkarıp torbaya tıktığını sade bir dille anlatan kitap. Sorgulama döneminde okununca çok iyi gelmiyor efendim. Bir yandan da tam da o boşlukta sallanılan dönemde net anlaşılan bir atmosferi, psikolojisi var kitabın. Ne diyeyim, kolay gelsin.
June 5, 2010
The thousands of my fans here at goodreads.com must know by now that I spent a great part of my childhood and early teen years in an island facing the Pacific Ocean (see my review of "Timbuktu" by Paul Auster). when I was around ten years old, a word was invented there, most likely by a close relative of mine named Aputuy (though I'm not sure of this as he may have picked it up also from someone else). I do not know how that word is spelled, but I'll write it here by the way it sounds: POO-CHOOT (the OOs like in choo-choo train). Around 40 years after I first heard it, people in my small town still knows what a poo-choot is.
There were a lot of poo-choots in my town. Then, and even now. They are those (in almost all cases I know, male, most of them unmarried) who do not do anything productive. They don't work. A poo-choot's daily routine goes something like this: he wakes up in the morning (some are early risers), eats breakfast (often just bread called "pan de sal" which is dipped into a cup of coffee before he drinks the coffee itself), walks around the town, stays or sits in a sidestreet or street corner when he finds someone to talk to, stays some place if someone offers him a drink, takes his meals (lunch and/or dinner) somewhere in between, sleeps at night, wakes up in the morning the next day and does the same thing again on that day, and the next, and the next.
The poo-choots survive, even with their unproductive lives, because they usually have females in the family working, or they have income from a few hectares of coconut plantations they inherited, or generous relatives (siblings, children, etc.) working out-of-town or abroad. Besides, it takes very little to keep a poo-choot alive. Often, they can also get free meals by dropping by some townspeople's houses during meal times.
"Dangling Man" is the story of Saul Bellow's poo-choot. Written like a journal, the first entry is for December 15, 1942. Joseph, a Chicago resident, has resigned from his regular job and is waiting to be drafted into the Army and fight in the war. His wife, Iva (they were chldless), continues to work and they live off Iva's meager salary. Seven months had passed, but Joseph is still waiting to be inducted into the Army. With nothing to do, he "dangles." He decides to write a journal to record his thoughts and feelings as a "dangling man," with a life he calls a--
"derangement of days, the leveling of occasions...days (which) have lost their distinctiveness. There were formerly baking days, washing days, days that began events and days that ended them. But now they are undistinguished, all equal, and it is difficult to tell Tuesday from Saturday. When (he neglects) to look carefully at the newspaper (he does) not know what day it it. If (he guesses) Friday and then learn that it is actually Thursday, (he does) not experience any great pleasure in having won twenty-four hours."
He recalls a friend who draws cartoon faces for an advertising agency and who has had an exhibition of his drawings in New York which failed (no one bought any of his pieces). Seeing that he has no talent of that sort, and despite his friend's unimpressive accomplishments, he writes that his friend--
"has escaped a trap. That really is a victory to celebrate. I am fascinated by it, and a little jealous. He can maintain himself. Is it because he is an artist? I believe it is. Those acts of the imagination save him. But what about me? I have no talent for that sort of thing. My talent, if I have one at all, is for being a citizen, or what is today called, most apologetically, a good man. Is there some sort of personal effort I can substitute for the imagination?"
He writes this inside his room in an apartment he and his wife rents. He continues that his friend "is better of"--
"There he is in New York, painting; and in spite of the calamity, the lies and moral buggery, the odium, the detritus of wrong and sorrow dropped on every heart, in spite of these, he can keep a measure of cleanliness and freedom. Besides, those acts of the imagination are in the strictest sense not personal. Through them he is connected with the best part of mankind. He feels this and he can never be isolated, left aside. He has a community. I have this six-sided box. And goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. I, in this room, separate, alienated, distrustful, find in my purpose not an open world, but a closed, hopeless jail. My perspectives end in the walls. Nothing of the future comes to me. Only the past, in its shabbiness and innocence. Some men seem to know exactly where their opportunities lie; they break prisons and cross whole Siberias to pursue them. One room holds me."
The poo-choots of our town are, indeed, good men. When I left for college they were there, smiling, wishing me luck. When I returned 20 or so years after, they were still there, older, but still smiling, keeping close, hoping that I treat them to rounds of beer. Keeping themselves in one place, with very little opportunity to do great evil, they approach the end of their lives not having stolen taxpayers' money, or lied to the public to conceal crimes, or facilitated corrupt transactions, wronged people for career advancements, cheated on their wives, or did all the other evil things men do when they reject the option to just "dangle" along. And you wonder, at the end of your own life, who had lived better.
There were a lot of poo-choots in my town. Then, and even now. They are those (in almost all cases I know, male, most of them unmarried) who do not do anything productive. They don't work. A poo-choot's daily routine goes something like this: he wakes up in the morning (some are early risers), eats breakfast (often just bread called "pan de sal" which is dipped into a cup of coffee before he drinks the coffee itself), walks around the town, stays or sits in a sidestreet or street corner when he finds someone to talk to, stays some place if someone offers him a drink, takes his meals (lunch and/or dinner) somewhere in between, sleeps at night, wakes up in the morning the next day and does the same thing again on that day, and the next, and the next.
The poo-choots survive, even with their unproductive lives, because they usually have females in the family working, or they have income from a few hectares of coconut plantations they inherited, or generous relatives (siblings, children, etc.) working out-of-town or abroad. Besides, it takes very little to keep a poo-choot alive. Often, they can also get free meals by dropping by some townspeople's houses during meal times.
"Dangling Man" is the story of Saul Bellow's poo-choot. Written like a journal, the first entry is for December 15, 1942. Joseph, a Chicago resident, has resigned from his regular job and is waiting to be drafted into the Army and fight in the war. His wife, Iva (they were chldless), continues to work and they live off Iva's meager salary. Seven months had passed, but Joseph is still waiting to be inducted into the Army. With nothing to do, he "dangles." He decides to write a journal to record his thoughts and feelings as a "dangling man," with a life he calls a--
"derangement of days, the leveling of occasions...days (which) have lost their distinctiveness. There were formerly baking days, washing days, days that began events and days that ended them. But now they are undistinguished, all equal, and it is difficult to tell Tuesday from Saturday. When (he neglects) to look carefully at the newspaper (he does) not know what day it it. If (he guesses) Friday and then learn that it is actually Thursday, (he does) not experience any great pleasure in having won twenty-four hours."
He recalls a friend who draws cartoon faces for an advertising agency and who has had an exhibition of his drawings in New York which failed (no one bought any of his pieces). Seeing that he has no talent of that sort, and despite his friend's unimpressive accomplishments, he writes that his friend--
"has escaped a trap. That really is a victory to celebrate. I am fascinated by it, and a little jealous. He can maintain himself. Is it because he is an artist? I believe it is. Those acts of the imagination save him. But what about me? I have no talent for that sort of thing. My talent, if I have one at all, is for being a citizen, or what is today called, most apologetically, a good man. Is there some sort of personal effort I can substitute for the imagination?"
He writes this inside his room in an apartment he and his wife rents. He continues that his friend "is better of"--
"There he is in New York, painting; and in spite of the calamity, the lies and moral buggery, the odium, the detritus of wrong and sorrow dropped on every heart, in spite of these, he can keep a measure of cleanliness and freedom. Besides, those acts of the imagination are in the strictest sense not personal. Through them he is connected with the best part of mankind. He feels this and he can never be isolated, left aside. He has a community. I have this six-sided box. And goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. I, in this room, separate, alienated, distrustful, find in my purpose not an open world, but a closed, hopeless jail. My perspectives end in the walls. Nothing of the future comes to me. Only the past, in its shabbiness and innocence. Some men seem to know exactly where their opportunities lie; they break prisons and cross whole Siberias to pursue them. One room holds me."
The poo-choots of our town are, indeed, good men. When I left for college they were there, smiling, wishing me luck. When I returned 20 or so years after, they were still there, older, but still smiling, keeping close, hoping that I treat them to rounds of beer. Keeping themselves in one place, with very little opportunity to do great evil, they approach the end of their lives not having stolen taxpayers' money, or lied to the public to conceal crimes, or facilitated corrupt transactions, wronged people for career advancements, cheated on their wives, or did all the other evil things men do when they reject the option to just "dangle" along. And you wonder, at the end of your own life, who had lived better.
August 19, 2023
106th book of 2023.
3.5. Surprisingly good. I've read Bellow before (The Victim) but can't remember much of it, so clearly it didn't leave a lasting impression. I've been a Dangling Man myself: before my current job I struck a bout of laziness, self-loathing and driving to work with apathy bordering hatred. Bellow's 'hero' is waiting to be drafted into the army: he's in Chicago purgatory, the in-between. Most days he sits, reads the papers, smokes. Wanders. A plotless novel by any measure but enjoyable for the narrative voice, a book as journal-entries. Joseph dangling drives him insane. It has echoes of something like Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. A sorry ass wondering where he fits in the world. Purpose is vital to life. A loveable bastard and from what I've read, the precursor to Bellow's later, Herzog. Well, that now impatiently waits for me as I dangle in-between Bellow books.
3.5. Surprisingly good. I've read Bellow before (The Victim) but can't remember much of it, so clearly it didn't leave a lasting impression. I've been a Dangling Man myself: before my current job I struck a bout of laziness, self-loathing and driving to work with apathy bordering hatred. Bellow's 'hero' is waiting to be drafted into the army: he's in Chicago purgatory, the in-between. Most days he sits, reads the papers, smokes. Wanders. A plotless novel by any measure but enjoyable for the narrative voice, a book as journal-entries. Joseph dangling drives him insane. It has echoes of something like Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. A sorry ass wondering where he fits in the world. Purpose is vital to life. A loveable bastard and from what I've read, the precursor to Bellow's later, Herzog. Well, that now impatiently waits for me as I dangle in-between Bellow books.
February 3, 2022
L’insano desiderio d’essere ogni cosa e ognuno e ogni cosa per ognuno
Tanto tempo fa lessi un bell’articolo che definiva treppiedi ebraico la produzione di Roth, Malamud e Bellow. Se il primo l’avevo letto fin lì con scarsa soddisfazione, per The Assiatant del secondo avevo acceso tutte le stelle disponibili. Ho continuato a leggerli entrambi gradendo parecchio Pastorale e Indignazione, meno Una nuova vita. Non mi decidevo invece a leggere il supporto Nobel del treppiedi, per una sorta di riverenza mista a sfiducia
Ho scelto l’Uomo in bilico per colmare la lacuna e devo dire che l’incipit mi aveva favorevolmente colpito
Ci fu un tempo in cui la gente aveva l’abitudine di rivolgersi frequentemente a se stessa e non si vergognava di registrare le proprie vicende interiori. Ma tenere un diario al giorno d’oggi è considerato una specie di debolezza verso se stessi, un vizio, soprattutto una cosa di cattivo gusto. Perché questa è un’epoca rude
L’epoca rude di cui parla Bellow è quella della seconda guerra mondiale, ma siamo in America e il conflitto rimbomba in lontananza. I colpi che si sentiranno nel libro saranno quelli vibrati da un uomo che licenziatosi, e trovatosi libero di poter trascorrere le proprie giornate a piacimento, si troverà schiacciato dall’ambiente in cui vive e dalle proprie elucubrazioni. Il testo è scritto sotto forma di diario e si apre il 15 dicembre 1942. Proprio come in un vero diario, ci sono giorni raccontati dettagliatamente, altri solo accennati ed altri ancora che danno l’occasione per partorire riflessioni sociologiche, filosofiche, antropologiche. In soldoni: all’angolo blu, in bilico sullo sgabello, con il peso di 220 libbre Il Nobel ebraico. Un quintale è anche il peso (massimo) del libro, che non scorre, nonostante alcuni capitoli siano più corti delle poesie di Iacchetti. Benchè lo abbia scritto in forma diaristica e dunque in prima persona, a Bellow pare interessare più il contesto sociale che il protagonista. Costui è definito da ciò che lo circonda, le sue riflessioni sembrano funzionali a metter in evidenza che cosa sia un uomo senza un lavoro negli anni quaranta in America. L’orgoglio di cui lo dota, la superbia con cui gli fa rifiutare l’aiuto economico del fratello, la dipendenza economica dalla moglie (impensabile nello stesso periodo da questa parte del mondo) sono più importanti delle discussioni filosofiche che intavola prima di tutto con sé stesso e poi con una serie di ex compagni di studio e bisboccia.
Credo d’aver avuto la certezza per qualche istante che il momento atteso fosse venuto e che fosse impossibile resistere oltre. Dovevo cedere. E riconobbi che il sospiro con cui avevo riempito i miei polmoni d’aria tiepida era anche un sospiro di sollievo alla mia decisione�
Questo è stato il punto in cui più di ogni altro mi sono sentito vicino a Joseph; quella decisione che arriva dopo una lunga battaglia fra una causa persa in partenza e un obbligo morale a cui non si sarà in grado di sottrarsi.
Il supporto Nobel del treppiedi è sicuramente la sua parte più pesante
Tanto tempo fa lessi un bell’articolo che definiva treppiedi ebraico la produzione di Roth, Malamud e Bellow. Se il primo l’avevo letto fin lì con scarsa soddisfazione, per The Assiatant del secondo avevo acceso tutte le stelle disponibili. Ho continuato a leggerli entrambi gradendo parecchio Pastorale e Indignazione, meno Una nuova vita. Non mi decidevo invece a leggere il supporto Nobel del treppiedi, per una sorta di riverenza mista a sfiducia
Ho scelto l’Uomo in bilico per colmare la lacuna e devo dire che l’incipit mi aveva favorevolmente colpito
Ci fu un tempo in cui la gente aveva l’abitudine di rivolgersi frequentemente a se stessa e non si vergognava di registrare le proprie vicende interiori. Ma tenere un diario al giorno d’oggi è considerato una specie di debolezza verso se stessi, un vizio, soprattutto una cosa di cattivo gusto. Perché questa è un’epoca rude
L’epoca rude di cui parla Bellow è quella della seconda guerra mondiale, ma siamo in America e il conflitto rimbomba in lontananza. I colpi che si sentiranno nel libro saranno quelli vibrati da un uomo che licenziatosi, e trovatosi libero di poter trascorrere le proprie giornate a piacimento, si troverà schiacciato dall’ambiente in cui vive e dalle proprie elucubrazioni. Il testo è scritto sotto forma di diario e si apre il 15 dicembre 1942. Proprio come in un vero diario, ci sono giorni raccontati dettagliatamente, altri solo accennati ed altri ancora che danno l’occasione per partorire riflessioni sociologiche, filosofiche, antropologiche. In soldoni: all’angolo blu, in bilico sullo sgabello, con il peso di 220 libbre Il Nobel ebraico. Un quintale è anche il peso (massimo) del libro, che non scorre, nonostante alcuni capitoli siano più corti delle poesie di Iacchetti. Benchè lo abbia scritto in forma diaristica e dunque in prima persona, a Bellow pare interessare più il contesto sociale che il protagonista. Costui è definito da ciò che lo circonda, le sue riflessioni sembrano funzionali a metter in evidenza che cosa sia un uomo senza un lavoro negli anni quaranta in America. L’orgoglio di cui lo dota, la superbia con cui gli fa rifiutare l’aiuto economico del fratello, la dipendenza economica dalla moglie (impensabile nello stesso periodo da questa parte del mondo) sono più importanti delle discussioni filosofiche che intavola prima di tutto con sé stesso e poi con una serie di ex compagni di studio e bisboccia.
Credo d’aver avuto la certezza per qualche istante che il momento atteso fosse venuto e che fosse impossibile resistere oltre. Dovevo cedere. E riconobbi che il sospiro con cui avevo riempito i miei polmoni d’aria tiepida era anche un sospiro di sollievo alla mia decisione�
Questo è stato il punto in cui più di ogni altro mi sono sentito vicino a Joseph; quella decisione che arriva dopo una lunga battaglia fra una causa persa in partenza e un obbligo morale a cui non si sarà in grado di sottrarsi.
Il supporto Nobel del treppiedi è sicuramente la sua parte più pesante
September 9, 2024
Joseph è un 27enne laureato in Storia che ha lasciato il lavoro per rispondere ad una chiamata alle armi che tarda ad arrivare. È sposato con Iva e da qualche mese è lei a mantenerlo. Vive chiuso in casa quasi tutto il giorno, parla da solo, spesso è irascibile e di cattivo umore. Più volte si ritrova a camminare incerto e senza scopo nel piovischio di una Chicago buia e fredda. Preso dallo sconforto, dal dicembre 1942 all’aprile 1943 tiene un diario su cui riversa i suoi tormenti. Racconto esistenzialista, inevitabilmente focalizzato sulla vita interiore del protagonista � quasi un’autoanalisi � e sulla sua difficoltà ad allinearsi alle regole della società. Esordio di Bellow, pubblicato a 29 anni. La forma vincolata toglie un po� di ampiezza, ma non intacca questo micro manifesto della frustrazione dell’uomo moderno nella società contemporanea. Autore imperdibile.
[78/100]
+ Niente mi dava più gioia dell’incontrarmi con i miei amici, da soli o in coppia, ma quando si trovavano assieme in un gruppo folto mi avvilivano.
+ Cosa ne direbbe Goethe della vista da questa finestra, della strada invernale e male illuminata, lui, con i suoi piaceri ricorrenti, i suoi frutti e i suoi fiori?
+ Abbiamo avuto un tramonto sconfinato, un’esplosione di colori chiassosi, rossi apocalittici e viola come quelli che devono essere apparsi sui corpi martirizzati dei grandi santi, blu lussuriosi e greci. Ho svegliato Iva e l’abbiamo guardato, mano nella mano. La sua era fredda e dolce. Io avevo un po� di febbre.
+ Ci avventiamo contro il nemico per ragioni indistinte di amore e solitudine. Forse, anche, di disprezzo verso noi stessi. Ma, soprattutto, di solitudine.
+ La più grande crudeltà consiste nel ridurre le aspettative senza eliminare del tutto la vita. Una condanna all’ergastolo è così.
[78/100]
+ Niente mi dava più gioia dell’incontrarmi con i miei amici, da soli o in coppia, ma quando si trovavano assieme in un gruppo folto mi avvilivano.
+ Cosa ne direbbe Goethe della vista da questa finestra, della strada invernale e male illuminata, lui, con i suoi piaceri ricorrenti, i suoi frutti e i suoi fiori?
+ Abbiamo avuto un tramonto sconfinato, un’esplosione di colori chiassosi, rossi apocalittici e viola come quelli che devono essere apparsi sui corpi martirizzati dei grandi santi, blu lussuriosi e greci. Ho svegliato Iva e l’abbiamo guardato, mano nella mano. La sua era fredda e dolce. Io avevo un po� di febbre.
+ Ci avventiamo contro il nemico per ragioni indistinte di amore e solitudine. Forse, anche, di disprezzo verso noi stessi. Ma, soprattutto, di solitudine.
+ La più grande crudeltà consiste nel ridurre le aspettative senza eliminare del tutto la vita. Una condanna all’ergastolo è così.
February 2, 2014
The reviews of this book seem to split the readers into people who vaguely identify with the fatuous intellectual and those who react and judge from a distance. I identify with him. Joseph is a Bellow protagonist who doesn't bluster larger than life like Henderson or isn't excessively snobby and removed, an alien from another generation like Sammler. He is a dabbling intellectual who judges doers from afar and is poisoned by the intersection of his own lack of initiative or concrete movement toward achievement, his lack of daily responsibilities, and the fact that the men around him are realizing their potential through sacrificing themselves. His reasoning is serpentine in its self delusion. As a person, he is half baked and at a crossroads. He obscures the fact that his choices are simple, to act and join the war effort, growing up through extinction, to obscure himself from the war and make his living some other way, possibly as a scholar, or to moulder on his wife's support. He distances himself from this wife, the one he tries to "mold" into a teachable image and the friends who alchemically reveal each others weaknesses at parties. The prospect of war and idleness erodes the "good man" image he cultivated in the past, revealing a primal rage and ugly traits. He is smart enough to judge and understand, but not talented or willful enough to create himself. His thoughts hum along disjointed and verbose, with their pithy, beautiful reflections of Chicago tableaus and their jottings of discursive ideas. The journal serves as a snippet, a snapshot in Joseph's life as it teeters on adulthood and/or extinction.
Joseph is a middling character, he has likeable and unlikeable traits. His intellectual musings don't have the heft of someone who successfully presents their thoughts to the public for a living. He has little right to judge those like Alf Steidler who actually showcase their ability to entertain, or his brother Amos who attempts to act in order to live and gain money for his family. Reviewers say he is solipsistic. I say that he has little connection to a wife he seems to have loved for what he could make out of her. One who he lives with, but seems not to love, like, or even hear anymore other than as a tottering feminine child who disturbs his thoughts. He is not compassionate to his friends and doesn't reach out to them with a quid pro quo to break his mental isolation.
Bellow, like Joseph, demonstrates potential in this first novel. To reflect humming thought, intellectual discourse, and reflections on culture at large while moving plot along. The beautiful sleight of hand and choice of detail in describing passing city images. Bellow allows the uncertain, changing thought process of the intellectual man to murkily reflect an understanding of culture during his time. My thought is chatty in this way, with ephemeral arguments, written and re-written as I gain experience. It takes little imagination or suspension of disbelief to fall into the thought processes of Bellow's more believable characters, particularly Joseph. I am just as solipsistic if not more, my thoughts and ideas rise, crest, and break on each other no less, and I am constantly reformatting my view on the world. Joseph's life is an unfinished, continued script like the book, which doesn't end in a satisfying way other than threatening extinction.
Joseph is a middling character, he has likeable and unlikeable traits. His intellectual musings don't have the heft of someone who successfully presents their thoughts to the public for a living. He has little right to judge those like Alf Steidler who actually showcase their ability to entertain, or his brother Amos who attempts to act in order to live and gain money for his family. Reviewers say he is solipsistic. I say that he has little connection to a wife he seems to have loved for what he could make out of her. One who he lives with, but seems not to love, like, or even hear anymore other than as a tottering feminine child who disturbs his thoughts. He is not compassionate to his friends and doesn't reach out to them with a quid pro quo to break his mental isolation.
Bellow, like Joseph, demonstrates potential in this first novel. To reflect humming thought, intellectual discourse, and reflections on culture at large while moving plot along. The beautiful sleight of hand and choice of detail in describing passing city images. Bellow allows the uncertain, changing thought process of the intellectual man to murkily reflect an understanding of culture during his time. My thought is chatty in this way, with ephemeral arguments, written and re-written as I gain experience. It takes little imagination or suspension of disbelief to fall into the thought processes of Bellow's more believable characters, particularly Joseph. I am just as solipsistic if not more, my thoughts and ideas rise, crest, and break on each other no less, and I am constantly reformatting my view on the world. Joseph's life is an unfinished, continued script like the book, which doesn't end in a satisfying way other than threatening extinction.
October 5, 2017
This was Bellow’s debut, published in 1944 when he was 29. It was probably not the best choice of introduction to Bellow � I’ll try Augie March or Herzog next � but I happened to find a cheap paperback copy in Oxfam and thought I might as well start there, having had my interest in Bellow piqued by James Atlas� The Shadow in the Garden.
The narrator, Joseph, lives with his wife Iva in a Chicago boarding house while he waits to be called up for war service. For nearly four months he keeps a journal expressing his frustration, which most often manifests as rage: “I feel I am a sort of human grenade whose pin has been withdrawn. I know I am going to explode and I am continually anticipating the time, with a prayerful despair crying ‘Boom!� but always prematurely.� An Angry Young Man avant la lettre? In the book’s most disturbing moment, he spanks his adolescent niece over a perceived slight. (He also likens a piano’s keys to the teeth of a “darky entertainer�!)
I enjoyed the philosophical arguments about the vanishing importance of the individual and the descriptions of rush-hour Chicago, but the plot itself struck me as slender. Still, there’s plenty of promise here � a career of over half a century awaited Bellow.
A favorite line:
“Trouble, like physical pain, makes us actively aware that we are living, and when there is little in the life we lead to hold and draw and stir us, we seek and cherish it, preferring embarrassment or pain to indifference.�
The narrator, Joseph, lives with his wife Iva in a Chicago boarding house while he waits to be called up for war service. For nearly four months he keeps a journal expressing his frustration, which most often manifests as rage: “I feel I am a sort of human grenade whose pin has been withdrawn. I know I am going to explode and I am continually anticipating the time, with a prayerful despair crying ‘Boom!� but always prematurely.� An Angry Young Man avant la lettre? In the book’s most disturbing moment, he spanks his adolescent niece over a perceived slight. (He also likens a piano’s keys to the teeth of a “darky entertainer�!)
I enjoyed the philosophical arguments about the vanishing importance of the individual and the descriptions of rush-hour Chicago, but the plot itself struck me as slender. Still, there’s plenty of promise here � a career of over half a century awaited Bellow.
A favorite line:
“Trouble, like physical pain, makes us actively aware that we are living, and when there is little in the life we lead to hold and draw and stir us, we seek and cherish it, preferring embarrassment or pain to indifference.�
June 17, 2022
Why did the American empire at its zenith produce so much depressing art? This book is about a guy who hates normal American life so much that he cannot wait to join the army. He gets into a petty fight with his relatives kid while waiting for the summons from the American army. That scene stayed with me. Pesky kids are underrated nuisances and villains in all societies. The protagonist cannot seem to stop making a fool of himself in this book.
Freedom actually sucks? We are all waiting to get into some kind of trap or the other? We long for some kind of trap from where we can simply pass the days so that it does not destroy us? Find your own trap. If only we all had a disciplinarian in our life. I think everyone longs for that benevolent disciplinarian like they long for the perfect lover. Like they long for the perfect porn or the perfect food. Maybe that is a cool start-up idea.
I read this while I was in Mumbai. A long time ago. Why do I discover these depressing American books? The purpose of all writers is to side with and offer sympathy to the malcontents of their own tribe. This book does so emphatically.
Freedom actually sucks? We are all waiting to get into some kind of trap or the other? We long for some kind of trap from where we can simply pass the days so that it does not destroy us? Find your own trap. If only we all had a disciplinarian in our life. I think everyone longs for that benevolent disciplinarian like they long for the perfect lover. Like they long for the perfect porn or the perfect food. Maybe that is a cool start-up idea.
I read this while I was in Mumbai. A long time ago. Why do I discover these depressing American books? The purpose of all writers is to side with and offer sympathy to the malcontents of their own tribe. This book does so emphatically.
June 5, 2017
"To be pushed upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt..."
منتظر يك
twist
پاياني بودم كه بهش پنج بدم؛ نداشت، ندادم...
چرا خوندنش انقدر طول كشيد؟چون راوي خيلي غرغرو بود...
دو تا كار از بلو خوندم به علاوه ي يكي دو تا مقاله از يك مجموعه مقالات. چيزي كه به ذهنم مياد اينه كه آرامش هميشه از كاركترهاي بلو به دوره، شخصيت ها در شروع دوره پست مدرن، بعد از جنگ جهاني دوم، حسابي شاكي و طلبكار، نق نقو و مدعي و تا حد بسيار زيادي مقصرند. بخش زيادي از هر دو كتاب به پرداختن به آنچه در ذهن كاركتر ها ميگذره اختصاص داده شده و در حالي كه راوي اون كتاب داناي كل و سوم شخصه و اين يكي اول شخص هر دو تقريبا از يك قاعده پيروي ميكنن.
داستان گاهي خسته كننده ميشه و طرح داستاني كه براي جذابيت و كشش بهش نياز داره رو (خيلي از كتاب ها براي كششون احتياجي به اين طرح داستاني ندارند ولي اين يكي واقعا داره) از دست ميده. تصور كنيد يكي كارشو ول كرده كه به جنگ اعزام شه، خب؟! به خاطر يه سري مشكلات نميشه! اين آدم در چه وضعيتيه؟! از اين جا رونده و از اونجا مونده... صد و پنجاه صفحه در اين باب غر ميزنه!
نظر به اينكه اولين رمان بلو بوده همين سه و نيم چهار بسشه.
اي دريغا كه من مقدمه كوتسي دلبندمو گير نيوردم كه بخونم...
منتظر يك
twist
پاياني بودم كه بهش پنج بدم؛ نداشت، ندادم...
چرا خوندنش انقدر طول كشيد؟چون راوي خيلي غرغرو بود...
دو تا كار از بلو خوندم به علاوه ي يكي دو تا مقاله از يك مجموعه مقالات. چيزي كه به ذهنم مياد اينه كه آرامش هميشه از كاركترهاي بلو به دوره، شخصيت ها در شروع دوره پست مدرن، بعد از جنگ جهاني دوم، حسابي شاكي و طلبكار، نق نقو و مدعي و تا حد بسيار زيادي مقصرند. بخش زيادي از هر دو كتاب به پرداختن به آنچه در ذهن كاركتر ها ميگذره اختصاص داده شده و در حالي كه راوي اون كتاب داناي كل و سوم شخصه و اين يكي اول شخص هر دو تقريبا از يك قاعده پيروي ميكنن.
داستان گاهي خسته كننده ميشه و طرح داستاني كه براي جذابيت و كشش بهش نياز داره رو (خيلي از كتاب ها براي كششون احتياجي به اين طرح داستاني ندارند ولي اين يكي واقعا داره) از دست ميده. تصور كنيد يكي كارشو ول كرده كه به جنگ اعزام شه، خب؟! به خاطر يه سري مشكلات نميشه! اين آدم در چه وضعيتيه؟! از اين جا رونده و از اونجا مونده... صد و پنجاه صفحه در اين باب غر ميزنه!
نظر به اينكه اولين رمان بلو بوده همين سه و نيم چهار بسشه.
اي دريغا كه من مقدمه كوتسي دلبندمو گير نيوردم كه بخونم...
September 8, 2023
Published in 1944 and set in 1942-1943, narrator and protagonist Joseph is a Canadian married to an American. They live in Chicago. He has quit his job and enlisted in the U.S. Army to join the fighting forces during WWII. His enlistment has stalled for numerous bureaucratic reasons, so he finds himself at loose ends. He and his wife move into a rooming house to save money. The storyline follows his waiting period where the waiting causes him to change. He gets angry and flies off the handle at the slightest provocation.
The best thing about it for me is the time period it was written, providing a contemporaneous glimpse at the home front during WWII. Other than that, I found it unpleasant. Joseph is a disagreeable person. He gets into arguments with his wife and extended family members. He rejects everyone who tries to help him. I don’t need every character to be likeable, but this is one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve ever read. Themes include alienation, existential angst, and indecision.
This is the third book I’ve read by Saul Bellow, and I have not enjoyed them very much. I think he is just not my kind of author. The prose is fine, but the storyline, characters, and messages are not at all appealing. Even though this book is short it felt like a chore to finish it.
The best thing about it for me is the time period it was written, providing a contemporaneous glimpse at the home front during WWII. Other than that, I found it unpleasant. Joseph is a disagreeable person. He gets into arguments with his wife and extended family members. He rejects everyone who tries to help him. I don’t need every character to be likeable, but this is one of the most unsympathetic characters I’ve ever read. Themes include alienation, existential angst, and indecision.
This is the third book I’ve read by Saul Bellow, and I have not enjoyed them very much. I think he is just not my kind of author. The prose is fine, but the storyline, characters, and messages are not at all appealing. Even though this book is short it felt like a chore to finish it.
September 22, 2021
From the very beginning of his career one of the most salient features of Bellow’s writing is the vividness of his descriptions, especially of faces and colours. Some authors craft perfect sentences with le mot juste carefully selected; Bellow seems like he could just as easily have circled around to the same scenario time and again and plucked another rabbit from a different hat to dazzle us.
Reading other reviews on this book makes me wonder just what it is people are looking for in novels, much less a first novel! This has existential angst, compelling characters, crisp and accurate descriptions of time and place and culture. I dunno. I will be reading it again.
Reading other reviews on this book makes me wonder just what it is people are looking for in novels, much less a first novel! This has existential angst, compelling characters, crisp and accurate descriptions of time and place and culture. I dunno. I will be reading it again.
November 4, 2023
"Numa cidade onde se viveu quase toda a vida não é provável que se seja sempre um solitário; e, no entanto, num sentido muito real, é esse precisamente o meu caso. Estou só durante dez horas por dia, num quarto apenas. "
Na Corda Bamba retrata o estado de espírito de toda uma geração que cresceu durante a Grande Depressão e a Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Estamos em 1942 e o nosso protagonista, Joseph, vive em Chicago e está à espera de ser chamado para se juntar ao exército americano. Joseph tem "todo o tempo do mundo" e enquanto espera começa um diário onde descreve as discussões com amigos e parentes e onde faz muita auto análise.�� No decorrer da narrativa vamos lendo este diário onde ele anota meticulosamente os seus pensamentos íntimos, inseguranças, medos, hábitos diários e conversas com o seu alter-ego.
Este livro é um pouco pessimista e opressivo em algumas partes e nota-se claramente a sensação de alívio de Joseph (e nossa também) quando no fim ele encontra a resposta sobre o que fazer para sair do limbo.
Saul Bellow escreveu este livro com 29 anos e embora seja um livro denso e por vezes filosófico, foi a semente para a magnífica obra deste Nobel da Literatura de 1976. Esta foi uma releitura que me fez gostar ainda mais deste livro do que da primeira vez que o li no século passado 😉
Tenho como objectivo reler toda a obra publicada em Portugal deste grande senhor da literatura mundial.
Na Corda Bamba retrata o estado de espírito de toda uma geração que cresceu durante a Grande Depressão e a Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Estamos em 1942 e o nosso protagonista, Joseph, vive em Chicago e está à espera de ser chamado para se juntar ao exército americano. Joseph tem "todo o tempo do mundo" e enquanto espera começa um diário onde descreve as discussões com amigos e parentes e onde faz muita auto análise.�� No decorrer da narrativa vamos lendo este diário onde ele anota meticulosamente os seus pensamentos íntimos, inseguranças, medos, hábitos diários e conversas com o seu alter-ego.
Este livro é um pouco pessimista e opressivo em algumas partes e nota-se claramente a sensação de alívio de Joseph (e nossa também) quando no fim ele encontra a resposta sobre o que fazer para sair do limbo.
Saul Bellow escreveu este livro com 29 anos e embora seja um livro denso e por vezes filosófico, foi a semente para a magnífica obra deste Nobel da Literatura de 1976. Esta foi uma releitura que me fez gostar ainda mais deste livro do que da primeira vez que o li no século passado 😉
Tenho como objectivo reler toda a obra publicada em Portugal deste grande senhor da literatura mundial.
July 20, 2024
O carte pe care am citit-o destul de repede (are puține pagini), dar care nu m-a prea impresionat.
E scrisa sub forma de jurnal, unde personajul principal își narează trăirile, emoțiile, temerile, visele și speranțele.
E scrisa foarte frumos, cu cuvinte bine alese, nu e o carte de duzina, însă nu neapărat pe gustul meu pentru ca nu rezonez cu tipul acesta de personaj: tot timpul într-o balanta, de a nu știi ce sa faci cu viata ta, de a nu știi ce sa alegi și chiar de a nu putea sa te adaptezi situației date.
Ii dau 3 stele pentru felul în care este scrisă și construita povestea, dar nu cred ca o voi tine minte pentru ca nu m-a cucerit. 🫣
E scrisa sub forma de jurnal, unde personajul principal își narează trăirile, emoțiile, temerile, visele și speranțele.
E scrisa foarte frumos, cu cuvinte bine alese, nu e o carte de duzina, însă nu neapărat pe gustul meu pentru ca nu rezonez cu tipul acesta de personaj: tot timpul într-o balanta, de a nu știi ce sa faci cu viata ta, de a nu știi ce sa alegi și chiar de a nu putea sa te adaptezi situației date.
Ii dau 3 stele pentru felul în care este scrisă și construita povestea, dar nu cred ca o voi tine minte pentru ca nu m-a cucerit. 🫣
December 7, 2012
Saul Bellow wrote Dangling Man when he was about my age and as I read, I recognized some of the thoughts and realizations that Joseph is having. For example, Joseph sees a clear difference between his current self and his younger (college-age) self. There is also the struggle with society's sense that professional progress is the end-all be-all for 20-somethings and that being stalled or focusing on other things means you're "dangling."
I liked this very much about the book because it felt very honest and authentic, both things that are absolutely necessary given that the novel's format is a personal journal. Apart from the very lengthy entires that got into actual story-telling and scene-setting (complete with characterization and dialogue) I really felt I was reading the sometimes inane, sometimes insightful musings, of a man in his late 20s, and I appreciate that perspective. 20 years from now, I might find this book simplistic or sophomoric, who knows?
In one early entry, Joseph writes:
"Trouble, like physical pain, makes us actively aware that we are living, and when there is little in the life we lead to hold and draw and stir us, we seek and cherish it, preferring embarrassment or pain to indifference."
While I haven't quite experienced this (I was never one to get in too much trouble) it resonates with me because it makes me muse a bit on adolescent rebellion - where it comes from and why it happens. Biologically speaking, we're all grown up at 14-16, but we still live a non-adult existence (in the US, anyway) until about 22 and often longer. The world is still closed to us at that age in a lot of ways and when we aren't part of life, we need some other way to feel alive.
There's a later moment when Joseph is conducting a mental conversation with "the spirit of alternatives" and the spirit notes that part of Joseph's problem is that he forgets that "everyone is dangling." This struck me too - I've often had the thought that life entails a lot of waiting -- "dangling".
I feel as though we're socialized as kids to see our childhood and adolescence as preparation for life in 'the real world.' We study hard and do activities and pick up good habits to prepare for 'life.' Then in adulthood, our first job sets us up for the next as we climb the career ladder, and our relationships flow from dating to marriage to having babies. It's unclear when the waiting stops and life begins, so we're all 'dangling' somehow.
Continuing down this rabbit hole (and away from Dangling Man), it strikes me that the problem is the all-encompassing linearity (linear-ness?) of our thinking. Life's blossoming is messy and free-flowing - why do we pretend it's a linear process and that the time we spend between rungs of the ladder is just preparing or waiting?
Themes: idleness, spiritual health, change of character, self-esteem, 1940s, Chicago, friendship, war, journal
I liked this very much about the book because it felt very honest and authentic, both things that are absolutely necessary given that the novel's format is a personal journal. Apart from the very lengthy entires that got into actual story-telling and scene-setting (complete with characterization and dialogue) I really felt I was reading the sometimes inane, sometimes insightful musings, of a man in his late 20s, and I appreciate that perspective. 20 years from now, I might find this book simplistic or sophomoric, who knows?
In one early entry, Joseph writes:
"Trouble, like physical pain, makes us actively aware that we are living, and when there is little in the life we lead to hold and draw and stir us, we seek and cherish it, preferring embarrassment or pain to indifference."
While I haven't quite experienced this (I was never one to get in too much trouble) it resonates with me because it makes me muse a bit on adolescent rebellion - where it comes from and why it happens. Biologically speaking, we're all grown up at 14-16, but we still live a non-adult existence (in the US, anyway) until about 22 and often longer. The world is still closed to us at that age in a lot of ways and when we aren't part of life, we need some other way to feel alive.
There's a later moment when Joseph is conducting a mental conversation with "the spirit of alternatives" and the spirit notes that part of Joseph's problem is that he forgets that "everyone is dangling." This struck me too - I've often had the thought that life entails a lot of waiting -- "dangling".
I feel as though we're socialized as kids to see our childhood and adolescence as preparation for life in 'the real world.' We study hard and do activities and pick up good habits to prepare for 'life.' Then in adulthood, our first job sets us up for the next as we climb the career ladder, and our relationships flow from dating to marriage to having babies. It's unclear when the waiting stops and life begins, so we're all 'dangling' somehow.
Continuing down this rabbit hole (and away from Dangling Man), it strikes me that the problem is the all-encompassing linearity (linear-ness?) of our thinking. Life's blossoming is messy and free-flowing - why do we pretend it's a linear process and that the time we spend between rungs of the ladder is just preparing or waiting?
Themes: idleness, spiritual health, change of character, self-esteem, 1940s, Chicago, friendship, war, journal
February 24, 2015
"Dangling Man," Nobel-Prize-winning author Saul Bellow's first novel (1944), is one of his slighter offerings. The central character, Joseph, is a "dangling man" because he has given up his job and is awaiting induction into the military. Perhaps he is dangling in another way: he has become too intellectually removed to connect emotionally with his wife Iva or his friends. His intellectual distance is applied to himself as well, and, despite all else, he does possess a certain lucidity. While he has now "outgrown" an earlier self, who was a committed political radical, this reader at least could not help but like that earlier self more than the lucid but lost "dangling" man he has become. For all the genius of this novel, I did not always hold my attention--left me feeling a bit dangling myself---but I am inclined to go on and read other novels from the Bellow oeuvre!
February 6, 2016
اولین کتابی بود که از این نویسنده خوندم و حقیقت اینه که نتونستم باهاش ارتباط برقرار کنم حتی با وجود اینکه کتاب جایزه نوبل 1976 رو هم دریافت کرده! تصمیم گیری درمورد سال بلو رو گذاشتم بعد از خوندن کتاب بعدیش؛ امیدوارم بتونه جزء نویسنده های مورد علاقم قرار بگیره :)) این کتاب منو یاد مورچه
آرژانتینی ِ ایتالو کالوینو و همینطور کارکترهای رمان جهالت ِ میلان کوندرا انداخت، حالا شنونده (خواننده) میتونه خودش درمورد این کتاب قضاوت کنه! :)
جمله مورد علاقم از این کتاب:
عشق موجب بیزاری از زندگی نمی شود. این ناتوانی ما در آزاد زیستن است
آرژانتینی ِ ایتالو کالوینو و همینطور کارکترهای رمان جهالت ِ میلان کوندرا انداخت، حالا شنونده (خواننده) میتونه خودش درمورد این کتاب قضاوت کنه! :)
جمله مورد علاقم از این کتاب:
عشق موجب بیزاری از زندگی نمی شود. این ناتوانی ما در آزاد زیستن است
March 12, 2012
A slim novel with huge ideas, and although a great foundation is laid down and much is left undone, underdone or unsaid (to the novel's detriment I must say), it's still a more than worthwhile read, especially considering the later heights Saul Bellow reached.
The protagonist Joseph, the eponymous 'Dangling Man' is, through a bureaucratic mix up caught between American army service during world war II and his life leading up to that. He has quit his job and is simply waiting with his wife in a small and suffocating tenement house for his draft date to come up. That's the basic story and essentially, this is all told in diary format, what happens is fairly linear, Joseph witnesses the fettering of his generation of intellectuals as they try, but mostly just meander, through their lives in an at war America.
Joseph's musings serve as the meat of the novel and for the most part I love them. He posits real and relevant questions regarding the place of man in the world regarding free will, the necessity and simultaneous painful burden of it, as well as backing up his claims and queries with wry observations about what the former 'masters' have come up with in terms of answers before his time, respectful but not above calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that though some things remain constant in the human experience, what remains equally constant is our inherent inability to cope with our surroundings, circumstances, other people, and even (and especially) ourselves.
The book is solipsistic however to the point of rendering of the other characters nearly irrelevant. Hell, in the last quarter of the book Joseph has two conversations with, not a person he knows, but rather what he perceives to be as the manifestation of his 'alternatives'. But that doesn't take too much away from the book as a whole, nor does the fact that the protagonist isn't particularly sympathetic...but then, none of the characters really are, but they are all rendered very humanly (with only slight exaggeratations for effect here and there and, due to the book's short lenght, unevenly).
A rock solid book with some moments of acute insight that will stay with you, Dangling Man shows itself for what it is, the potential for future revelation is there, but here it's not quite achieved. The final moments of the novel wherein (SPOILER..thought not really, you'll know it about half a page in where this story is going to conclude) Joseph resigns himself to military service with a somber sense of relief knowing that his life and the responsibility of it won't be his for a time, is humbling, if a bit incomplete and leaves the reader a bit unfulfilled. It's not that I don't agree with the argument, not at all it makes perfect sense, but Bellow doesn't prepare the reader enough here and the conclusion comes off as a rushed patch rather than any iron clad conclusion about man's freedom and the necessity and even benefits of giving it up.
But still, it's a quick but significantly deep read, check it out to see where one of the apparent greats cut his teeth.
The protagonist Joseph, the eponymous 'Dangling Man' is, through a bureaucratic mix up caught between American army service during world war II and his life leading up to that. He has quit his job and is simply waiting with his wife in a small and suffocating tenement house for his draft date to come up. That's the basic story and essentially, this is all told in diary format, what happens is fairly linear, Joseph witnesses the fettering of his generation of intellectuals as they try, but mostly just meander, through their lives in an at war America.
Joseph's musings serve as the meat of the novel and for the most part I love them. He posits real and relevant questions regarding the place of man in the world regarding free will, the necessity and simultaneous painful burden of it, as well as backing up his claims and queries with wry observations about what the former 'masters' have come up with in terms of answers before his time, respectful but not above calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that though some things remain constant in the human experience, what remains equally constant is our inherent inability to cope with our surroundings, circumstances, other people, and even (and especially) ourselves.
The book is solipsistic however to the point of rendering of the other characters nearly irrelevant. Hell, in the last quarter of the book Joseph has two conversations with, not a person he knows, but rather what he perceives to be as the manifestation of his 'alternatives'. But that doesn't take too much away from the book as a whole, nor does the fact that the protagonist isn't particularly sympathetic...but then, none of the characters really are, but they are all rendered very humanly (with only slight exaggeratations for effect here and there and, due to the book's short lenght, unevenly).
A rock solid book with some moments of acute insight that will stay with you, Dangling Man shows itself for what it is, the potential for future revelation is there, but here it's not quite achieved. The final moments of the novel wherein (SPOILER..thought not really, you'll know it about half a page in where this story is going to conclude) Joseph resigns himself to military service with a somber sense of relief knowing that his life and the responsibility of it won't be his for a time, is humbling, if a bit incomplete and leaves the reader a bit unfulfilled. It's not that I don't agree with the argument, not at all it makes perfect sense, but Bellow doesn't prepare the reader enough here and the conclusion comes off as a rushed patch rather than any iron clad conclusion about man's freedom and the necessity and even benefits of giving it up.
But still, it's a quick but significantly deep read, check it out to see where one of the apparent greats cut his teeth.
October 25, 2018
داستان به صورت خاطره نویسی مردی کانادایی به اسم جوزفه، سالها سالهای قبل جنگ جهانی دومه وجوز� منتظره که از طرف ارتش امریکا پذیرفته بشه. جوزف تا زمانی که پذیرفته بشه آزاده که هرکاری میخواد بکنه، اما از اسم کتاب مشخصه که جورف در. این شرایط توفیق اجباری معلق میمونه.جمله پایانی کتاب جمع بندی کتاب محسوب میشه.
نمیدونم چرا خوندن کتابش علی رغم سوالاتی که راجع به موضوعات مورد علاقه م ؛چرایی زندگی و تنهایی اگزیستانسیالیستی بود بهم نچسبید. و نهایتا به دادن نمره ۲بسنده کردم:/-
نمیدونم چرا خوندن کتابش علی رغم سوالاتی که راجع به موضوعات مورد علاقه م ؛چرایی زندگی و تنهایی اگزیستانسیالیستی بود بهم نچسبید. و نهایتا به دادن نمره ۲بسنده کردم:/-
December 18, 2024
Questo è stato, per me, il libro giusto al momento giusto
February 27, 2017
"I am exhilarated by the tremendous unimportance of my work. It is nonsense. My employers are nonsensical. The job therefore leaves me free. There's nothing to it. In a way it's like getting a piece of bread from a child in return for wiggling your ears. It is childish. I am the only one in this fifty-three-story building who knows how childish it is. Everybody else takes it seriously. Because this is a fifty-three-story building, they think it must be serious. 'This is life!' I say, this is pish, nonsense, nothing! The real world is the word of art and of thought. There is only one worth-while sort of work, that of the imagination." (90-91)This is Bellow's first novel, written in 1944—near the end of World War II and the beginning of U.S. involvement. It also happens to be the first of his works that I decided to read. Dangling Man comprises a series of journal entries written by a man named Joseph, who finds himself in limbo after quitting his job and waiting to be drafted into the army. The wait drags on for about a year—the 'story' (there is not much in terms of plot) centers on Josephs idealistic past, combined with his musings on idleness and the feelings and thoughts provoked in him by doing nothing. It reads and feels much like an American version/extension of the Russian superfluous man motif, although Joseph is supported by his wife (not an inheritance), and it is not quite as good (as, say, Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man or other comparable consciousness-turned-in-upon-itself type novels). In the end, therefore, I like the idea of Dangling Man more than its execution. Still, I am curious to see how Bellow matured as a writer, this having been his first attempt. I'll definitely read more of his later works.
October 7, 2008
The late Nobelist’s first novel—and the first of his I’ve read� is a novel in the form of a personal journal. Written (by Bellow) a year or so after the period of the journal (by Joseph), the winter-spring of 1942-43, it recounts a young Chicagoan’s wait before being inducted into the Army. A technicality has thrust him into a kind of limbo of waiting and he sourly muses his way through it, behaving like an ass to his wife and acquaintances. The time is meant as a kind of gift to him, a freedom to pursue his intellectual interests and enjoy the weeks or months before he must join the war. But the freedom is a burden and he slinks into a chip-on-his-shoulder depression instead. He resents his brother, his wife, his niece, his one-time friends, his rooming house neighbors. The book drags, even though it is only 142 pages long, with the reader wearying of Joseph’s ennui well before Joseph finally does and up and enlists. The author goes on to better things, Joseph, I suspect, does not.
November 30, 2016
kitabı bitiriş tarihi olarak bugünü yazdım ama bugün bu kitabı 4. kez bitirişimin tarihi aslında. iki kere orjinalini (pdf) bir kere okuyanus yayınlarından çıkan bir kerede cem yayınlarından çıkan baskısını okudum ve sabaha kadar hakkında konuşabilirim gibi (okuyanus çevirisi berbat, yazım hataları filan can sıkıcı).
blogumda da yazmıştım, kendimi tekrar edecek gibi olacağım ama, kafka'nın dönüşüm'ünde gregor samsa modern hayatta iş ve sorumluluklar yüzünden nasıl böceğe dönüşüyorsa joseph de savaş zamanı boş zamanlar, parasızlık ve gittikçe içine battığı öfke, umutsuzluk ve can sıkıntısı ile böcek demeyeyim ama şu anda bizim yaşadığımız 21. yüzyılın umutsuz, perişan insanına dönüşüyordu. arkadaşları ile paylaştığı bir hayatı kalmamıştı, karısını ona bir şeyleri ima etmekle suçluyor, metresi tat vermiyor, abisinden midesi bulanıyordu. dışarı çıkmak için sebebi yoktu, çıktığında da birileriyle karşılaşmamak için belli sokaklardan geçmiyor, bir mekanda çalışanlarla tanış olmak istemiyordu. ahhh bunlar bana öyle yakın şeyler ki, keşke beni tanısanız ya da bu kitabı 4 kere okusanız.
blogumda da yazmıştım, kendimi tekrar edecek gibi olacağım ama, kafka'nın dönüşüm'ünde gregor samsa modern hayatta iş ve sorumluluklar yüzünden nasıl böceğe dönüşüyorsa joseph de savaş zamanı boş zamanlar, parasızlık ve gittikçe içine battığı öfke, umutsuzluk ve can sıkıntısı ile böcek demeyeyim ama şu anda bizim yaşadığımız 21. yüzyılın umutsuz, perişan insanına dönüşüyordu. arkadaşları ile paylaştığı bir hayatı kalmamıştı, karısını ona bir şeyleri ima etmekle suçluyor, metresi tat vermiyor, abisinden midesi bulanıyordu. dışarı çıkmak için sebebi yoktu, çıktığında da birileriyle karşılaşmamak için belli sokaklardan geçmiyor, bir mekanda çalışanlarla tanış olmak istemiyordu. ahhh bunlar bana öyle yakın şeyler ki, keşke beni tanısanız ya da bu kitabı 4 kere okusanız.
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